I’m fairly certain that newspapers all over America (and perhaps the world) increased their press run for their historic Nov. 5, 2008 editions. Still, yesterday you couldn’t find a copy of the Washington Post with its “President Obama” front page by 10 a.m. today near my downtown D.C. office. A giddy Mort Zuckerman of the New York Daily News said on MSNBC yesterday that the print edition is selling out so fast that more press runs are planned.
In this era of 24/7 news, there’s still something appealing about saving a souvenir print edition for your children or grandchildren.
I’m also fairly convinced, though, that the print edition is more of a souvenir than ever before in a presidential election. And this was an unprecedented election. More people voted than ever before. Millions of people donated money online, and it’s likely that more people than ever followed the election online.
Four years ago, there was no Politico, or Huffington Post, or Twitter. While I can’t speak for the traffic to other political and news sites, I can say that CQPolitics.com saw record traffic on Tuesday.
Major events always create brief spikes in news site traffic — but in the aftermath, the traffic tends to settle at a higher level than before. At some point, online and mobile media become the first choice of news consumers.
So here’s a question for Tidbits readers: Have we reached that tipping point for political news? Have online and mobile media finally taken the lead?
